[4.0.0-alpha7] Allow hx-target in <hx-partial> to swap multiple targets using a .class selector?

[YamiOdymel]

I'm sorry for repeatedly posting on this issue, but the documentation is very unclear about whether hx-target supports the .class selector to target multiple elements.

For example, the documentation (both the 2.x and 4.0 versions) explains that you can swap multiple targets within a single response (though I know this is not about hx-target), but it never states whether hx-target must be an #id. This may lead to misunderstanding.

In #3550, it was clarified that the regular hx-target does not support the .class selector. However, I was told that hx-swap-obb does support it. Since <hx-partial> is presented as an alternative to hx-swap-obb, shouldn't hx-target in <hx-partial> also support the .class selector so that multiple targets can be swapped?

But, when I tried hx-swap-obb in 4.0.0-alpha7, it only swapped the first matched .class element: #3683 🫠 (wat)

At this point, the overall situation has become quite confusing for me. Like, are they supported, or are there no plans to support them? If not, I'd like a "CLASS SELECTOR IN hx-target IS NOT SUPPORTED 🫵" in the documentation.

Also, feel free to close any of my issues if they are not relevant, sorry for keep spamming it.

[YamiOdymel]

bro, and .hx-indicator doesn’t support class selectors 😭😭 and it’s not documented in the docs

[MichaelWest22]

Yeah class selectors should work the same as any other type of selector. However It will only currently swap the first item found by any selector for main swaps as it is currently designed. OOB in htmx 2 had a feature where selectors that returned multiple elements would swap all the element targets and not just the first one but with the ground up re-write and addition of hx-partial this feature has not yet been added into htmx 4. Have to think about if this is a feature we need to support and should it just be oob and partials or main swaps as well. Swapping the main target into multiple locations on the page could cause unexpected issues for some users and the main swap target has a lot of complexity.

There is a multiswap extension we have just ported over to htmx 4 and it would be good to add proper multi return selector support to this so that user can opt in safely to multi swaps when they need them instead of over complicating core htmx

the hx-indicator=".someclass" attribute is designed to add the request indicator class to all elements that match the selector and not just the first so this should work just fine.